First published in Egypt in 1925, Taha Husayn’s (d. 1973) Fi al-Shi’r al-Jahili, “On Pre-Islamic Poetry,” challenged the authenticity of Pre-Islamic poetry. Western scholarship on the resulting controversy has primarily focused on the court battles that ensued leading to his censure and firing from some of the positions he held, as well as highlighting how Husayn’s freedom of speech was trampled upon as a result of religious persecution. While the Islamic intellectuals and ulama who criticized the work are usually presented as irrational religious zealots whose simplified and dogmatic views led them to condemn an ‘enlightened’ intellectual who sought to elevate scholarly methods of research in the greatly evolving Egyptian milieu of the interwar period by incorporating Western historical methods of research in his work, this paper argues that the responses of the ulama were much more nuanced and level-headed than previously presented. Through discussing a book criticizing Husayn written by a Tunisian Islamic scholar who would later become the rector of Al-Azhar, Muhammad al-Khidr Husayn (d. 1958), I argue that the ‘reactionary’ responses revealed an attempt to reconcile Western methods of historical research with classical Islamic ones. Al-Khidr Husayn’s criticism stands apart from many of his peers, particularly because his work was seen as the official response of Al-Azhar to Fi al-Shi’r al-Jahili, but also because of his exceptional argumentative skills, his level tone, his demand for intellectuals to have the proper levels of knowledge when discussing a religious topic, and his demand for clarity in their discussions of religious matters that could be easily misunderstood. Although the issues that Taha Husayn argued in his book remain contested to this day, the arguments made by his interlocutor, al-Khidr Husayn, remain relevant to discussions of the appropriateness of using classical Islamic methods of research in modern settings, to what extent Western and Islamic methods overlap and/or diverge, and if a more ‘modern’ Islamic methodology could be developed in light of the changing scholarly standards of knowledge. The findings of this paper add detail to our knowledge of traditional Islamic scholars’ deliberations on issues raised by modernity.

This paper investigates the implicit and explicit assumptions underlying a set of medieval Islamic texts on pedagogy. An Islamic way of education produced between the 9th and the 14th centuries did not have a pedagogy of its own as we think of it in the contemporary era, but it shaped the traditional approach to the methods and principles of teaching and learning in Islam for hundreds of years to come up until now. Islamic scholars’ main concerns in the given time period were Islamic theology and jurisprudence, teaching sciences, production and transmission of knowledge, and conducts of learning and teaching. Influential scholars of this era were Ibn Sahnun and al-Jahiz (9th century), Ikhwan al-Safa and al-Farabi (10th century), Ibn Sina (late 10th and early 11th centuries), al-Qabisi and Miskawayh (11th century), al-Ghazali and al-Zarnuji (12th century), and Ibn-Khaldun and Ibn Jama‘ah (14th century). In this pre-modern era, it was acknowledged that learning and teaching with the concept of “tawheed’ (unity of God) at its core was important for perpetuation of religion as a set of moral principles that guided people throughout their lives. According to Adel Al-Sharaf (2013), several medieval scholars who produced work on education approached it not as a separate subject field but more of a sub-field of larger societal and philosophical questions because Islam meant a way of life rich in moral concerns that had to guide the individual in every aspect of their daily interactions. Through content analysis of the works of the aforementioned medieval scholars on education, this study investigates what guided them in their identification of the aim(s), objective(s), curriculum, pedagogy, and the etiquette of an Islamic way of learning and instruction in the Medieval Islamic Era. In other words, what were the medieval concerns for the betterment of the individual and accordingly the society so that Islam as a way of living could be holistically warranted? An analysis of the educational theory produced in this era will also help analyze its potential implications for contemporary Islamic schools whose worldwide numbers are increasing rapidly. Current findings show that central to the work of those medieval scholars was that God and knowledge were inextricably linked; hence learning should lead to God. In addition, education was seen as a social necessity for perpetuation of the religion.

This paper will focus on the epistemological problem as faced by the founders of Sufism in the 10th and 11th centuries. More than any other Islamic science, Sufism had to prove the legitimacy of its origin, sources, and methods. In particular, Muslim scholars challenged the validity of the Sufi epistemological method of inspiration or self-unveiling (kasf) and concluded that Sufism was not a valid Islamic science. According to the Sufis, after a process of seclusion, a Sufi can remove veils of the carnal (lower) soul (nafs) through the personal process of observation (mushahadah) and can reach the state of mystical annihilation of self (fana). He thus can obtain the inner meanings of the corporeal world and gnostic knowledge directly from God. This enlightenment helps the Sufi not only to receive a deeper knowledge of things such as mystical truth (haqiqa) but also to obtain new knowledge which does not exist explicitly in traditional Islamic sources, the Quran and hadith. Theoreticians of Sufism such as Abu Nasr as-Sarraj (d.988), Abu Talib al-Makkī (d. 996), Abu Bakr al-Kalabadhi (d. 990), al-Qushayrī (d.1072), and al-Hujvīrī (d.1072) emerged between the 10th and 11th centuries and strove to defend the legitimacy of Sufism by identifying out the four aspects of Sufism that were accepted as components of science at that time: subject, method, goal, and terminology. In this paper, I will investigate early Muslim scholars’ critiques of Sufi methodology and the responses of these Sufi scholars. The following research questions lead to a textual conversation between Muslim and Sufi scholars. Why is the Sufi method problematic and invalid in the view of Muslim scholars? How do Sufi scholars claim inspiration as a licit way of obtaining divine knowledge? Where does inspiration rank on the scale of methods for obtaining Islamic knowledge? What is the epistemological significance of Sufi inspiration? By analyzing their answer to these questions, I will highlight the attitudes of Sufi scholars in their efforts to legitimize the Sufi way of knowledge as a licit Islamic method. On the one hand, they were also strict followers of Islamic Law (sharia) who wanted to demonstrate the suitability and reliability of the method. On the other, this was the only way to survive against the critiques of scholars and the threat of political power.